3rd Century Coins found in Lucanian Excavation

Semuncia of the Mercury-Prow Type, prior to 208 BCE. It seems likely this may be from one of the issues struck for the Romans at Luceria. The expert on these bronzes is Andrew McCabe. I defer to his judgement and do not assign this a Crawford number as McCabe has shown that we can better group these south Italian Hannibalic War issues than was possible when Crawford was assembling his typology. The excavators classify it as RRC 38/7.

This quincunx of Luceria corresponds to HN Italy 678. These are also typically dated to the later part of the Hannibalic War, c. 211-200.

Here is a machine translation of the excavator’s report of the context of these finds and possible explanations:

On the top surface of the moulded base, two bronze coins were found: one (RP 14) along the southern edge (fig. 31), the other (RP 15) along the western edge near the NW corner (fig. 24). RP 14 (figs. 24, 32) is a quincunx from Luceria (Obv. head of Minerva / Rev. eight-spoked wheel, legend LOVCERI with archaic L), datable to the late 3rd century BC, while RP 15 (fig. 33) is a semiuncia (diam. 2.0 cm; Obv. head of Mercury to the right / Rev. prow to the right, legend ROMA), also assignable to the late 3rd century BC. Given the small number of coins recovered from trench M-6 — just three in total — the discovery of two of them at the edges of the base and in contact with it may not be entirely coincidental.

The stratigraphic sequence helps make sense of the recognition of activities. At the end of the sanctuary’s life, in the 1st century AD, the inscribed block RP 19 was still on the moulded base, along with another block to which it was connected by two iron clamps; the data does not tell us whether they still supported a crowning block. At some point, the clamps were broken, and a fragment of one ended up on the surface in front of the base, before the fall of block RP 19; presumably, it was only at this point that the upper block was dismantled. The coins, found on the edges of the base and covered by the abandonment layer, may have been uncovered during the dismantling of the blocks. If this hypothesis is accepted, they could be interpreted as objects deliberately placed between the blocks at the time of the base’s construction; otherwise, one must suppose that they were inserted into the joints during the ‘ritual’ life of the base, emerging by chance only after its dismantling.
Osanna et al. “Rossano di Vaglio, santuario italico:
cronaca e nuovi dati dalla campagna di scavo del 2024″
doi.org/10.69590/e8zcns05

Once again I’m grateful to Dan Diffendale for sharing his work so readily. I would have missed this publication and its FIVE new Oscan inscriptions, to say nothing of these coins without his public out reach.

By they by, I’ve been to this site, but not since 1999 when in October Michael Crawford took me and two other students on a Lucanian adventure. An amazing man. An amazing mentor. He was so committed to showing us more than just artifacts, but the actual landscape of the history we so wanted to understand.